As the owner of a radio alarm clock, I could theoretically start listening to the Today programme before I’m even awake, but I rarely do. I tell myself it’s too much for first thing; that it’s bound to put me in a bad mood with some interview or other; that Today can wait until tomorrow – or at least until I’ve had my breakfast and a blitz of the somewhat jollier Times Radio. The levée, I say in a Bertie Woosterish sort of way, demands something light.

But then I find myself waking up unintentionally early, switching to Radio 4 and discovering that Prayer for the Day is about to begin. Prayer for the Day is never light, and it certainly isn’t Woosterish, but it sounds gentle enough for the sixth hour, and so I lie there and listen.

There is something quite wonderful about having a bishop or spiritualist or whoever else speaking prayers in your ear when you’re in bed and well. In many ways Prayer for the Day is easier to relax into than Thought for the Day because it’s slightly more predictable. You never know what you’re going to get with the latter. It’s part of its charm, of course, that it jumps around from topic to topic, so that in the space of a few days you may be ushered between acts of modern martyrdom in Kenya and the sentient potential of AI in Buddhist thought. But when you crave something thought-provoking but also comforting in its vague familiarity, nothing beats a few minutes of prayer.

Take an example from a couple of weeks ago. The guest, author Steve Taylor, spoke of an experience he had had at a railway station. He felt a sudden urge, he said, to love and connect with everyone around him. He described this experience as ‘not uncommon’ at stations, and as ‘spiritual’, and suggested that it might make us think of being passengers on the common journey of life.

It had never occurred to me to consider all those times I’ve struck up conversation with someone on the platform as anything other than a diversion from boredom. Taylor’s prayer that we all treat each other kindly as fellow passengers is one you’ll often encounter in places of worship. But hearing it from the comfort of bed, ahead of a train journey, felt less like religion and more like good counsel, such as a monarch might receive from a courtier. Less godly than lordly. I enjoyed it.

A few minutes later, still just shy of six o’clock, it’s time for Tweet of the Day. All the episodes currently airing on Radio 4 throughout the week are repeats – or more often repeats of repeats – from the original series. This doesn’t matter too much. Who but a keen ornithologist can recall what a barred warbler sounds like from one year to the next? Few in the UK, apparently, for as Michaela Strachan says in the episode, the bird resides in central and eastern Europe.

The male cuckoo presents the opposite case. His song is instantly recognisable but his body is not. According to Sir David Attenborough, a calm avuncular voice for this ungodly hour, our ancestors used to suppose that cuckoos transformed themselves into sparrowhawks in winter as they were so seldom seen. It was only recently that the cuckoo’s migration to central Africa for the colder months was proven and tracked. The chances of hearing its song in London this spring are so slim that I gladly satisfy myself with the recording.

Tweet of the Day is so much more civilised than its eponymous rival. I know many people who spend their waking moments trawling Twitter for news and find it instantly stimulating, but at risk of sounding like Mary Poppins or indeed Whitehouse, have they tried listening to a minute’s birdsong and commentary instead? Strong views are often aired here too.

‘In my opinion puffins are just dead boring,’ offered bird-man Tim Birkhead in one memorable moment. Not even the puffin isle of Skomer could endear him to the big-billed birds and their layabout ‘bugger-all display’.

A recent Thought for the Day urged us to look at the world with the awe of a child who’s seen a cow for the first time. I may well have been drunk with sleep, but I empathised with all those idle, antisocial birds as I languished in bed, the odd pigeon cooing pitifully outside my window. Early morning might just be the best time for absorbing life lessons. Current affairs and Twitter can wait.